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We are all going to die

Local Columns

This is for you, Doug. I will never forget the moment I told you I was going to take over the DFJ for two months. You rolled your eyes. That was back in the spring of 2022. This is for you, Loween, whose expressions I remember clearly when I presented at a Rotary meeting in the basement of the Second Street Emporium so very long ago. I recall I was introducing my play "Afternoon." I read from the dry research material I had gathered and, hoo boy, did your face tell a story. I think you would agree that dry is an understatement. But then I began to tell a greater story, that of ...

More in common than I thought

Local Columns

My father and I didn’t have a lot in common and that fact began to show up in our relationship when I was about 12 years old. The age labeled “pre-teen” is difficult for the pre-teen and his/her parent. In my case, it began a time of being many things my father wasn’t. Please don’t misunderstand; my father was a good, hard-working, God-fearing man. He worked hard, brought home his paycheck every week and loved our mother. What I was becoming, however, was something Dad wasn’t. Being the oldest of his six children, I came to realize those differences created some ...

Growing up fast

Local Columns

Several years ago the Des Moines Register published a photo of a young guy skating at a skateboard park in the metro. The cutline identified the young man as a 25-year-old. My first thought was, “When I was 25 I was so busy working I couldn’t have gone skateboarding even if I could skateboard.” Back in the 1960s some of us grew up quickly. By the time I was 22 I had a good (albeit low-paying) job, was married and my wife and I had purchased our first house. By the time I was 24, I was a father. From the time I was a late teen I ran with an older crowd. Most of my friends ...

Education doesn't seem to be a priority for our state Legislature

Letters to Editor

To the editor: In the Daily Freeman Journal’s sister paper, The Fort Dodge Messenger, State Representative Ann Meyer attempted to take the Iowa Democrats to task over school spending. She covers the money allocated to the schools and says the increases make the 2 percent that the Legislature passed come up to a 2.8 percent increase by the time transportation and equity increases were allotted. In the Des Moines Register the governor this past week said she was proud of the 2 percent increase in school spending. The tell of the tale was all you have to do is Google the inflation ...

A strange sense of humor is better than no sense at all

Local Columns

Do you remember the first time you told a joke and no one laughed? I don’t. It’s happened to me so many times I can’t remember the first. I grew up in a home with lots of jokes, teasing and laughter. Our mother’s family was full of jokesters and Mom kept us laughing, too. Our family’s sense of humor was earthy. Dirty jokes were strictly forbidden (when Mom and Dad were home) but we siblings joked about most anything else — a baby sister sneezing milk through her nose, accidental flatulence, even a father who stalked an annoying box elder bug on the kitchen floor to bring ...

Treating others with respect

Local Columns

I have always liked older people. My parents were close to many of their aunts and uncles so I got to know and appreciate that generation when I was a kid. I especially appreciate how many of those folks treated me as a kid. One afternoon when I was 13 years old, my Great Uncle Bill and Great Aunt Lena drove up our long farm lane. Lena wanted to visit with my mother in the house; Uncle Bill stayed outside and struck up a conversation with me. Uncle Bill was driving a late model General Motors automobile; I think it was a Buick. At 13, I was enamored with cars and I remember ...